What would Edric, the poor fisherman, think if he could see the Thames--silvery no longer--hurrying by the wide granite embankments--past Doulton's gigantic Lambeth potteries and Lambeth Palace and the River Terrace of the Houses of Parliament--covered with panting steamboats and heavy barges--swirling brown and turbid under the splendid bridges that span it, down to the Tower of London, and the Pool, and the Docks, where the crossing lines of thousands of masts and spars make a brown mist above the shipping from every quarter of the globe? Poor Edric would look in vain for fish in that dirty river; and full four hundred years have passed since "the Reverend Brother John Wratting, Prior of Westminster," saw twenty-four salmon offered as tithe at the High Altar of the Abbey.
What would King Sebert the Saxon think if we took him into the glorious building that has risen upon the foundations of his little church in the marshes?
[Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY.--NORTH ENTRANCE.]
At first sight Westminster Abbey is a little dwarfed by the enormous pile of the Houses of Parliament and their great towers. And St. Margaret's Church, nestling close to it on the north, mars the full view of its length. But when we draw near to it, all other buildings are forgotten. Crossing St. Margaret's churchyard where Raleigh sleeps, we seem to come into the shadow of a great gray cliff. Arch and buttress and pinnacle and exquisite pointed windows tier upon tier, are piled up to the parapet more than a hundred feet over our heads. Before us is the north entrance--well named "Solomon's Porch." It is a "beautiful gate of the temple" indeed, with its three deep-shadowed recesses, rich with grouped pillars supporting the pointed arches above the doorways--its lines of windows and arcades above and below the grand Rose Window, over thirty feet across--its flying buttresses and delicate pinnacles terminating one hundred and seventy feet above the ground--the whole surface wrought with intricate carving, figures of saint and martyr, likeness of bird and flower, grotesque gargoyles, fanciful traceries and lines and patterns--a stone lace-work of surpassing beauty.
We gaze and gaze, and try to take in the wonder of stone before us. Then, through the bewildering noise of London streets, the rattle of cabs and carriages, the whistle and rumble of underground railways, the ceaseless tramp of hurrying feet on the pavement--"Big Ben" booms out eleven times solemnly and slowly from the Clock Tower. We pass the photograph and guide-book sellers, and push open the doors under the central archway of Solomon's Porch. In an instant the glare and noise and hurry are left behind. We find ourselves in a sweet mellow silence--in a dim tender light--in a vast airy stillness, such as you find at noontide in the depths of a beech forest. But here the boles of the beech-trees are huge pillars of stone--the branches are graceful pointed arches that spring from them, and vaultings and ribs that flash with gold through the blue mist that hangs forever about the roof a hundred feet overhead. Outside the Abbey surge the waves of the great city. We hear a faint murmur of the roar and turmoil of its restless life breaking like distant surf upon the shore. But within these walls we are still and peaceful--and, if we will, we may read in "brass and stony monument" the story not only of England's worthies, but of her religion, her politics, her art, and her literature for full eight hundred years. Yes! for eight hundred years. For although the present Abbey is but six centuries old, there are still remains to be seen of an earlier building.